France on Monday began less than a fortnight of frenetic election campaigning for snap polls called by President Emmanuel Macron to combat the far right, with star footballer Kylian Mbappe warning the country was at a historic crossroads.
Candidates had until Sunday evening to register for the 577 seats in the lower house National Assembly ahead of the official start of campaigning from midnight for the June 30 first round. The decisive second round takes place on July 7.
The alliance led by centrist Macron, who called the snap polls some three years early after the far right trounced his party in EU Parliament elections, is still lagging way behind with little chance of winning an outright majority itself.
Many in France, including ex-leaders, remain baffled over why Macron took the risk of calling an election that could see the far-right National Rally (RN) leading the government and its leader Jordan Bardella, 28, as prime minister.
One of the most high-profile of the last candidates to register was Marie-Caroline Le Pen, the elder sister of the RN's three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who will stand for the party in the central Sarthe region.
Her daughter Nolwenn Olivier is Bardella's ex-partner.
Mbappe, representing France at the Euro 2024 tournament in Germany, said he was "against extremes and divisive ideas" and urged young people to vote at a "crucial moment" in French history.
The striker defended comments made on Saturday by his teammate Marcus Thuram, saying he "had not gone too far" in calling on the country "to fight every day to stop" the RN winning the elections.
"Today we can all see that extremists are very close to winning power and we have the opportunity to choose the future of our country," Mbappe said.
France's men's football team has long been seen as a beacon for diversity in the country. The French Football Federation has urged against "any form of pressure and political use of the French team".
Macron's dissolving of parliament after the French far right's victory in the EU vote has swiftly redrawn the lines of French politics.
A new left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front that takes in Socialists and hard-leftists, faced its first crisis over the weekend after some prominent MPs from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party found they had not been put forward to stand again.
But Adrien Quatennens, a close ally of LFI figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon, withdrew his candidacy which had sparked anger due to a conviction for domestic violence.
On the right, the decision of Eric Ciotti, the leader of the Republicans (LR), to seek an election pact with the RN provoked fury inside the party and a move by its leadership to dismiss him, which a Paris court blocked on Friday.
Adding to the chaos, the LR's executive is now fielding a candidate to stand against Ciotti in his home region of Nice.
